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Robert 'Bam Bam' Lawrence, during an interview at Auburn state prison, describes the moments before he shot Wallie Howard Jr. in the back of the head Oct. 30, 1990. "I seen his hand going like this."
(John O'Brien | jobrien@syracuse.com)

"I tried to look at his mother a number of times, to somehow convey just with a look how sorry I was," he said in an exclusive interview last week with syracuse.com / The Post-Standard. "I understand her pain."

Wearing no handcuffs or leg irons, Lawrence sat in a sparse conference room at Auburn state

prison Thursday, across a table from a reporter. It was the first time he'd granted a media interview since the Oct. 30, 1990, murder of Howard in the parking lot of a South Salina Street grocery store.

For the first time in more than two decades, Lawrence has a chance to be freed from prison for murdering Howard. The 31-year-old investigator was working undercover for a DEA task force Oct. 30, 1990, when Lawrence killed him in a botched robbery.

U.S. District Judge David Hurd, citing a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, last week reduced Lawrence's prison sentence from life without the possibility of parole to 31 years and 5 months. That means Lawrence will likely become eligible for parole in 6 1/2 years - with a possible release date from state prison of Oct. 28, 2020.

In court and during the prison interview last week, Lawrence talked about how sorry he is, how much he's changed, and how he knows the damage he's done to Howard's family and fellow officers.

He was asked in the interview whether he would do whatever he could to lessen the pain for Howard's mother, Delores, and the rest of the Howard family.

"Most certainly," Lawrence said.

Would he make this promise: That he would not appear for his parole board hearing in 2020 or any others that came in the years after that, guaranteeing that he would never be released?

No.

"I don't know what that would solve," he said. It would tell Howard's family that they could maybe forget about this new worry of him someday walking free, the reporter said.

"OK, but would you want to condemn a 16-year-old kid who didn't know no better?" Lawrence asked.

That was the crux of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2012 that guided Hurd to reduce Lawrence's sentence. It was cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore unconstitutional, to make it mandatory for federal judges to sentence juvenile defendants to life in prison without considering the effects of their age, the court ruled.

"At the end of the day, they treat me like my decisions was that of a grown man," Lawrence said. "I didn't know. I had no idea of the damage that I would cause, of the suffering that would take place. I was a baby."

Delores Howard has thought a lot about what Lawrence said in court, including comments about a tough upbringing, she said.

"We all grew up in hard times," she said. "But we didn't go out and shoot anybody."
She said she doesn't believe Lawrence's claims that he's sorry and that he's a changed man. If he ever gets out, he'll keep committing violent crimes, she predicted.

Before the prison interview, Delores Howard asked a reporter to pass along a message.

"Tell him, 'I hope you rot in hell,'" she said. He got the message last Thursday and showed no emotional reaction.

"I understand her pain, and I pray that one day she'll forgive me, because in order to heal I think there should be forgiveness," Lawrence said.

The fateful day

During the interview, Lawrence looked the reporter directly in the eye. He spoke slowly and calmly, never raising his voice or appearing agitated. He prefers to be called Robert now. He got the nickname Bam Bam when he was a toddler, because he was always getting into trouble, he said.

Lawrence, 40, said he thinks about Oct. 30, 1990, "all the time."

"I think about how I could've not been in this position, how I could've not took somebody's life, how I could've went the other way, or just dropped my weapon and ran," he said. "I think about all of that."

He admitted that he lied about that day in the first few years after the murder. He claimed back then that he didn't know he was going to a robbery, only that the drug ring leader, Jaime "Stringer" Davidson, had given him a gun to act as protection.

Robert 'ÂBam Bam'Â Lawrence, during an interview at Auburn state prison, points to where he shot Wallie Howard Jr. in the back of the head Oct. 30, 1990.John O'Brien | jobrien@syracuse.com

The plot to rob Howard and his confidential informant, Luther Gregory, was hatched a few weeks earlier, Lawrence admits now. Davidson was upset that Gregory was complaining that he was getting bad cocaine, Lawrence said.

Lawrence saw nothing wrong with selling drugs or robbing people, he said. He'd grown up seeing people with no jobs driving nice cars and wearing fancy clothes. They were the fruits of the drug-dealer's life.

When he was an infant, Lawrence's mother dropped him off at a newsstand in New York City with a 15-year-old friend of hers. "I'll be right back," his mother, Maureen Julien, said. But she did not come right back.

That woman became Lawrence's surrogate mother. She nicknamed him "Street Baby."

Lawrence's lawyer, Federal Public Defender Lisa Peebles, told Hurd in court this week that Lawrence was raised by the streets of Brooklyn, and that his mother relinquished him to the care of drug dealers.

On the morning of Howard's murder, Davidson handed Lawrence a .357-caliber revolver and "sent me on a mission," Lawrence said.

"He told me it was supposed to be a drug deal, and 'We ain't gonna sell him nothin' -- just take it and give me what he's supposed to give me,'" Lawrence said.

One of their gang, Juan Morales, was supposed to meet with Howard and Gregory and give them a surprise pat-down to make sure they weren't carrying any weapons, Lawrence said. But for whatever reason, Morales didn't do that.

Morales brought Gregory to an apartment complex while Howard waited for them to return with 4 pounds of cocaine, Lawrence said. At the apartment, the drug dealers tied Gregory up and Lawrence beat him with the revolver.

They arrived in the parking lot outside what was then Mario's Foodmarket, where Howard was in the passenger's seat of a Plymouth Horizon, waiting to make the undercover drug buy.

The plan was for another of Lawrence's accomplices, Gary Anthony Stewart, to get in the driver's side and demand that Howard show his hands, to ensure that he wasn't armed, Lawrence said.

"He got to the scene and jumped in the car as I was walking around the back of the car," Lawrence said. "As I was getting to the passenger's side and as I was getting there, I seen Stewart jumping out the car and running, and I heard shots. When I heard the shots I seen Stewart fall."

Stewart had pulled a gun on Howard inside the car and the officer shot him twice.
"When I seen that, I drew out the gun I had, and I was trying to back up, like I was taking a step back," Lawrence said. "But I seen a hand swinging towards me and I seen a gun in his hand and I fired. It was like off of impulse."

Robert 'Â'Bam Bam'Â Lawrence, during an interview at Auburn state prison, describes shooting Wallie Howard Jr. in the back of the head Oct. 30, 1990. "I take full responsibility." John O'Brien | jobrien@syracuse.com

Lawrence made this sort of self-defense claim during his federal trial in 1993 and a jury rejected it, convicting him of intentionally killing Howard.

He said last week that he takes "full responsibility" for his actions and wasn't trying to make any excuses. But he insists he thought Howard was another drug dealer, not a cop.

Howard's true identity was unknown to Lawrence until later that day, when officers were interrogating him at the Public Safety Building later that day, he said.

"I seen how upset they was. They was visually upset. And they said I killed one of them, a police officer."

As for the sincerity of his claims that he's completely changed, that he's sorry and that he would work hard to turn around young criminals if he were ever released? Lawrence pointed out that in the past 23 years, he has never filed a single court case
to try to get released. He was content to serve out his sentence and die behind bars.

It was his lawyer, Peebles, who went to him with the Supreme Court case that has opened the possibility of freedom, he said. He read the case and realized he a federal judge would have to at least consider a reduced sentence.

In prison, Lawrence has gotten written up 20 times for fighting, drugs, harassment and lying, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Grant Jaquith. But only one of those was in the past 10 years, Hurd said.

The lack of misconduct behind bars shows he's changed, Lawrence said. He said he often talks to street gang members in prison to try to straighten them out.

And he's forgiven the mother who abandoned him, he said. He saved his prison earnings of 30 to 42 cents an hour working in the kitchen for years and, in 2005, sent her a check for $12,358, according to court papers.

"She needed it and I forgive her," he said. "I'm fighting real hard to be a better person."
Two days after Lawrence's court appearance, Delores Howard said she was feeling drained.

She wasn't surprised to hear that Lawrence wouldn't make a promise not to go to his parole hearings despite his claims that he's sorry and wants to help the family.
She'll be there too, Howard said.